John Lefevre, the banker behind the sarcastic @GSElevator Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) handle who signed a major book deal to “expose” the inside of Wall Street banking, is coming clean.
GSElevator’s identity had been known to a small group of New York financial media professionals
In a piece he wrote on Business Insider Tuesday titled “Goldman Sachs Elevator: It’s Time I Set The Record Straight,” Lefevre says he always expected to be identified. “The issue of my anonymity was simply a device, and one that has suited the construct of the Twitter feed,” he wrote. “In fact, I’ve always expected to be outed, especially given the sensitive and personal nature of many of the stories coming in the book.”
Readers will recall that when his book deal was announced, an article in ValueWalk said “(while) the book will be penned under an assumed alias of JT Stone, the actual author is said to be known among certain Wall Street media circles and has a reputation as a prolific writer.”
Getting a start on the Solomon bond desk in London
Lefevre got his start in 2000 interning for Salomon Brothers in London “on the Victoria Plaza trading floor of Liar’s Poker fame,” he wrote. “My wild ride formally commenced the following year, beginning in the wake of the dotcom bubble bursting, and carrying me across three continents, and through the worst financial crisis in generations.”
Lefevre never worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS), although he was offered a job at the head of the Asia Debt Syndicate and has been in Goldman’s elevators “too many times to count.”
Book about “every banker”
Lefevre, who thought Greg Smith’s book on Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) was “boring as hell,” is expected to write a page turning entertaining book that will detail his experiences in banking and won’t focus on the @GSElevator Twitter handle. “The book is not about Twitter. Any person who actually thought my Twitter feed was literally about verbatim conversations overhead in the elevators of Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) is an idiot. GSElevator has never been an anonymous person,” he said. “It’s not a person at all. It’s the embodiment or aggregation of ‘every banker’, a concentrated reflection of a Wall Street culture and mentality.”
The book will be “a collection of true stories from my experiences directing traffic at Wall Street’s epicenter – the bond syndicate desk, he said. “I sat above the Chinese Wall – straddling the private side (Investment Banking) and the public side (Sales & Trading). I helped companies raise billions of dollars, companies like Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), American International Group Inc (NYSE:AIG), Unilever N.V. (NYSE:UN), Rolls-Royce Holding PLC (OTCMKTS:RYCEY) (LON:RR), GlaxoSmithKline plc (NYSE:GSK), and Diageo plc (NYSE:DEO)… and then Korean and Indian bureaucrats, Chinese billionaire tycoons, and Indonesian thugs.”
The book, published by Simon and Schuster, is scheduled for an October 2014 release.
